Saturday, April 16, 2016

The Clintons racism is so in your face

Bill Clinton’s behavior was calculated, predictable, and inevitable.
The only question was the timing. It’s the song he loves to sing, and
Hillary sings it, too, as she did two decades ago when she spoke of the
“kinds of kids that are called ‘super predators” – the ones with “no
conscience, no empathy, we can talk about why they ended up that way,
but first we have to bring them to heel.”This is a lot louder than a dog-whistle; it’s white racist theater in
service of the Mass Black Incarceration State. Bill Clinton reprised
the performance, in Philadelphia, a generation later, with full-throated
venom.The Clintons worry that Hillary’s amiable meetings
(“chats”) with Black Lives Matter delegations in 2015, and the
Democratic National Committee’s endorsement of the Movement that summer,
has tainted her with voters that would usually go Republican, but who
are thought to be ripe for defection in the Year of the Donald. At some
point in the campaign, she was bound to stage a dramatic display of
“independence” from Black Lives Matter – or have her husband do it.Hillary’s defenders claim that she bears no responsibility for her
life-partner’s harangue. But, it is obvious that Bill felt no need to
recant his position on mass Black incarceration. The next morning, he
issued an insulting, back-handed non-apology:
"So I did something yesterday in Philadelphia. I almost want to
apologize for it," he said. "I know those young people yesterday were
just trying to get good television. And they did. But that doesn't mean
that I was most effective in answering it.”

Iraqi lawmakers voted Thursday to
remove the parliament speaker and his deputies from office, increasing
political turmoil as the country battles jihadists and struggles with a
financial crisis.The chaos
at parliament is a significant setback for Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi, overshadowing his efforts to replace the current cabinet and
preventing nominees from being brought to a vote.

The lead up to Thursday was an ongoing sit-in (against the list of
proposed ministers). Wednesday had been an emergency session. Thursday
was supposed to see a vote on the list.

His sudden push for a new Constitution not only is unconstitutional, it also showed no patient or restraint.

His first effort, began March 31st, outright failed.

Instead of learning from his lesson, he tried to shove through a new list this week.

That's what's caused the turmoil.

ALL IRAQ NEWS notes
the comments were in a televised address where he offered that this
political struggle "could lead, God forbid, Iraq into turmoil."

As though he were somehow above the fray?

And exactly when was turmoil absent from Iraq?

More to the point, what's going on in Parliament is not that disruptive.

Nouri al-Maliki refusing to step down after the 2010 elections for eight
months, thereby refusing to allow a new government to form?

That was disruptive.

This just qualifies as lively politics.

Haider's attempting to replace the Cabinet in a manner that goes around the Iraqi Constitution.

He's calling it a 'reform' and a way to address corruption -- which is also an insult to every member of the Cabinet.

What's really going on?

Erin Banco (IBT) notes one aspect of the issue:Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi says he is trying to curtail
endemic corruption by appointing a new Cabinet filled with technocrats,
but his efforts have so far failed: Several of his nominees have refused
to accept his appointments and, amid the ensuing chaos, officials are quietly trying to skew the country’s economy for personal gain.Ayad Allawi, a former
interim prime minister under the U.S. occupation and one of the vice
presidents whose position was cut by Abadi in 2015, is one of those
officials. The recently released Panama Papers have revealed Allawi’s
secret offshore accounts and the scope of his connection to one of the
world’s largest energy companies, raising questions not only about his
current motivations, but also the motivations of his Kurdish and
Sunni confidants. [. . .]Although he may not be vying for a leadership position himself, he is
looking to put some of his Kurdish allies into power, according to two
officials in the Ministry of Natural Resources in Erbil who asked to
remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak on the
matter. If Allawi succeeds, he could get massive financial
payouts from energy companies. Many of those companies, including the
United Arab Emirates' Crescent Petroleum, have received late payments
from the Kurdistan Regional Government. Those companies are also
interested in keeping allies in top positions in order to continue to
maintain profitable contracts.

After dramatic media hype, PM Abadi & his comrades caged in the
Green Zone agreed to continue the etho-sectarian distribution of power #Iraq

4 retweets4 likes

It certainly says it all."Dramatic media hype."As we noted in last night's snapshot, to push that drama, they had to ignore the pushback which was immediate. Immediate?Our April 2nd snapshot noted at length the various objections to what Haider al-Abadi was proposing.REUTERS didn't report it.AP didn't cover it.THE WASHINGTON POST and THE NEW YORK TIMES took a pass.But if you read Arabic, you could find coverage from the Iraqi press -- and we did.It was obvious immediately that this plan cooked up by the White House was going to fail.And it has.That hydrocarbons legislation?They want it, they want it so bad.They being elements of the ruling class in the United States.They wanted it when Bully Boy Bush was in the White House.And they tried repeatedly to get it.Bully Boy Bush even made it one of his 2007 benchmarks -- the passage of that legislation.He failed repeatedly.As has Barack.And bad news -- and, no surprise, unreported by US outlets -- Iraqi
officials are calling for the oil wealth to be distributed to the
people.It's not just Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr -- though he has been the most prominent thus far.The story of Iraq's oil is the story the western press is always
skittish to cover -- other than how it's doing in the stock market.Barack Obama and his underlings tried to present the move as 'democratic' and 'reform.'And the western press went along.They ignored that the move went completely against the Constitution of Iraq -- both how it was done and what was being proposed.They ignored the objections to the proposal.They did everything they could to propagandize for the White House.But it all imploded.

ALSUMARIA observes fun and games are to resume on Saturday when Parliament is scheduled to next meet.

The world waits to see what happens next.

Meanwhile, yesterday the US Defense Dept announced more bombs dropped on Iraq:

Strikes in IraqAttack, ground-attack and fighter aircraft conducted 17 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:-- Near Hit, four strikes struck three separate ISIL tactical
units, destroying four ISIL machine gun positions, an ISIL boat, an ISIL
boat dock, seven ISIL fighting positions, an ISIL vehicle and an ISIL
command and control node and denying ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Kisik, two strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed an ISIL fighting position and an ISIL bunker.-- Near Mosul, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical
units and destroyed four ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL vehicle-borne
bomb, and an ISIL storage facility.-- Near Qayyarah, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit,
an ISIL headquarters and an ISIL financial headquarters and destroyed an
ISIL assembly area.-- Near Sinjar, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas.Near Sultan Abdallah, two strikes destroyed seven ISIL boats and an ISIL mortar position and denied ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Tal Afar, a strike suppressed an ISIL mortar position. Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.